Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey Bishop George Councell to retire

TRENTON — Bishop George Councell made his way around his spacious office on West State Street, past the objects he has collected over his 38 years as a clergyman — small wooden carvings of religious figures, stained glass pieces and shelves of leather-bound books.

He sought out one particular item, a framed prayer on a side table near a comfortable green chair.

“This is what I wanted,” he said, fixing his glasses to read from the prayer. “Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day, with all that it shall bring.”

The passage explains why he has decided, after leading the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey for nearly 10 years, to step down from his position and make way for a new leader, he said.

“It’s time for someone with more energy,” the 63-year-old bishop said. “The scope of this job is huge.”

With 154 churches in 14 counties across the state, the bishop is the spiritual leader for nearly 40,000 worshipers, as well as 300 priests and 75 deacons. The diocese also runs a school in Burlington, Doane Academy, where attendance has been consistently growing, said Councell, a Pennington resident.

So far nine candidates have been named as potential successors. Coming from as far as Seattle to as nearby as Trenton, the candidates will spend the next month getting to know the diocese’s priests, who will elect the next bishop on May 4. Three members of each church’s congregation will also participate in the vote. Councell, the diocese’s eleventh bishop, will officially step down in November.

Sitting in his office last Friday, the bishop reflected on his own election a decade ago.
“When the call came, my blood turned to ice water,” he recalled.

“I wanted to become a bishop to get closer to God, but with so many people here to look after, I thought, ‘Wow, I’ll really have to get closer to God to do this,” he said, laughing. “But I feel that I have.”

One way he feels he’s done that has been by showing strong support for the rights of gays and lesbians within the church community, he said. As bishop, Councell allowed his clergy permission to officiate over same-sex marriages in their churches. Episcopalians also accept gay clergy members, including one who serves in the New Jersey diocese, Councell said.

“It was very dear to me to keep everyone at the table, the Lord’s table, and not needlessly build these boundaries among one another,” he said. “The church isn’t the totally safe place I want it to be for gays and lesbians, but I think we’ve made it a safer place for them, and a place where they can come, and be seen as people who want the same things as all of us: to have a healthy, happy, strong, supportive family.”

Councell beefed up the church’s youth outreach programs, arranging for chaplains to visit the campuses of Rider, Rowan and Kean universities and The College of New Jersey. Princeton and Rutgers have also had longstanding outreach programs.

He said he encouraged programs to teach anti-racism and reached out to partner with the Diocese of Ecuador, which he called a “companion diocese” to his own.

Founded in 1785, the diocese in Trenton originally spanned the entire state, until a boom in church membership led to the formation of the separate Diocese of Northern New Jersey in 1874.

Councell’s diocese, whose seat is Trinity Cathedral on West State Street, is the sixth largest Episcopalian diocese in number of parishes and the eighth-largest in number of baptized members, according to the diocese’s website.

Yet the number of congregants and average attendance have been dwindling, Councell said, and along with them the amount of money the organization raises annually. The shrinking funding during his tenure has led the bishop to change and in some cases give up some of his plans, such as hiring a second bishop to help manage the heavy workload, he said.

Those challenges will now be passed on to the new bishop, Councell said.

“We share the lines of decline that all the major churches share,” he said. “We’re in a big situation with our society where more people, if they’re given to anything, it’s a more secular or materialistic viewpoint.”

He hopes the next leader of the diocese will try to address that problem in part by bringing the messages of the church straight to the community, by preaching and teaching and by having the church intensify its volunteer and charitable efforts, he said.
“Woody Allen said it best: ‘Eighty percent of success is showing up,’” Councell said.

Showing up for the job was not always easy for Councell. His open support of gay rights led to several bloggers targeting him online with nasty comments. He was also diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease five years ago, though he “refuses to let that be a distraction,” he said.

To prove that point, Councell climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 2008. He’s also been to Machu Picchu in Peru and plans to visit Patagonia and Antarctica next year after he retires.

Other future plans for Councell include learning more Spanish so he can converse with his one-year-old granddaughter, who is half-Venezuelan and being raised bilingual.

“After that,” he joked, “I think I’ll take a nap for about a year.”

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to clarify the longstanding nature of the outreach programs at Princeton and Rutgers.